The Master shows us how.
The first of the Lord’s seven utterances on the cross is as follows: “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do” (Lk. 23:34). Of all the sayings of the Lord Jesus which have been preserved to us, these are among the most treasured by believers, and rightly so. First, because of our love to Him who loved us and gave Himself for us. Then they are prized because of their own inherent grandeur and worth. “Never man spake like this Man,” and never did the uniqueness of His speech reveal itself more markedly than in these farewell words.
The setting for His plea
Let us gather around the cross and try to picture the scene. Pilate has passed sentence; Barabbas has been released; Jesus has been scourged. And now—after having been subjected to the course jests of the barrack-room, where He was mocked, and struck, and spat upon—He is led out to Calvary. At last, all the dreadful preliminaries over, the unresisting Prisoner is nailed to the cross.
In whatever way the crucifixion was effected, it was probably just at that moment of intense agony when the body had been raised upright, and the tender, sensitive tissues of the hands and feet were torn and quivering with pain, that Jesus spoke the words of our text: “Father, forgive them…”
As one has graphically said, “Racked by the extremest pain, and covered with every shame which men were wont to heap on the greatest criminals; forsaken and denied by His disciples; no sigh escaped His lips, no cry of agony, no bitter or faltering word; only a prayer for the forgiveness of His enemies.”
To whom did He send His petition?
Note to whom Jesus addresses this prayer: “Father.” What a revelation lies in this one word! Smarting under a sense of injustice, suffering mental and physical agony, men have often been tempted to doubt, not only God’s wise government of the world and loving care for His creatures, but even His very existence. But our Saviour, in this hour of severest anguish, never for a moment falters in His sense of God’s nearness and love. Behind all the hatred and plotting of men, behind all their brutality and injustice, wrapped in clouds and thick darkness, but still there, was the Father. As James Russell Lowell wrote:
Careless seems the great Avenger;
History’s pages but record
One death-grapple in the darkness
’Twixt old systems and the Word;
Truth forever on the scaffold,
Wrong forever on the throne—
Yet that scaffold sways the future,
And behind the dim unknown
Standeth God within the shadow
Keeping watch above His own.
“Under great losses and crosses,” says C. H. Spurgeon, “one is apt to think that God is not dealing with us as a father with a child, but rather as a severe judge with a condemned criminal; but the cry of Christ, when He was brought to an extremity which we shall never reach, betrays no faltering in the spirit of sonship. In Gethsemane, when the bloody sweat fell to the ground, His bitter cry commenced with, ‘My Father.’…May the Spirit who teaches us to cry, ‘Abba Father,’ repel each unbelieving fear. Never may we become captives to the spirit of bondage so as to doubt the love of our Father or our share in His adoption.”
Practicing what He preached
Long before, the Lord had taught His disciples, “Love your enemies, and pray for them that persecute you” (Mt. 5:44). Now He was showing them how to carry out that dramatic precept in His hour of trial.
What a shock this petition must have been to His accusers and judges! “Father, forgive them.” This was an appeal to a higher tribunal; this was intercession for them at the bar of another court. The One who was falsely accused and left without an advocate now becomes their defence attorney and pleads their case before the throne of God, the Judge of all. He pleads for them; evidently they are threatened with some mysterious and awful doom, and He interposes. They would not have wondered if He had cursed them, as the crucified usually did to their executioners. It would have been more natural if He had cried, “Father, consume them!”
The Sun of Righteousness sets upon Calvary in wondrous splendor, but among the bright colors which glorify His departure there is this one. The prayer was not only for others, but for His cruelest enemies. His enemies, did I say? There is more than that to be considered. It was not a prayer for enemies who had done an ill deed years before, but for those who were then and there murdering Him.…I say not that this prayer was confined to His immediate executioners. I believe that it was a far-reaching prayer which included scribes and Pharisees, Pilate and Herod, Jews and Gentiles—in fact, the whole human race in a certain sense, since we are all concerned in that murder. But certainly the immediate persons, upon whom that prayer was poured like healing balm, were those who there and then were committing the brutal act of fastening Him to the accursed tree. —C. H. Spurgeon
The drawing power in the prayer
Thus, as we have seen, those who were sinning in condemning and crucifying Him were the representatives of the whole human race, and this prayer has a far wider reach than the little circle round the cross. As the unseen power draws the needle to the magnet, the river to the ocean, the earth to the sun, so the wondrous love of Christ reaches, and draws men’s hearts to Himself. The warm, loving influences of this petition encircle you and me, even in our carelessness and God-forgetfulness, and draws us to the love of such a forgiving God.
The heart of the petition
To understand these words more fully, we must notice that our Saviour viewed their conduct, not so much as a wrong done to Himself, but as a heinous sin against the Father; as an outrage against the government of Him whose throne is founded on righteousness and justice.
The great fact underlying the petition is this: it is proof of the Lord consciousness that He was dying as a Sacrifice for the sins of the world. Dr. Steinmeyer says, “This prayer becomes intelligible only on the assumption that our Lord was at this very time pouring forth His blood for many for the remission of sins—the blood which speaks better things than that of Abel.”
Since the persecutors and murders of the Son of God might, through His atoning blood and powerful intercession, find mercy and rejoice in divine forgiveness, may we not find here ground for believing that all sinners, however guilty, can find pardon, peace, and power through the same all-prevailing sacrifice? Yes, for we have His own assurance: “Him that cometh unto Me, I will in no wise cast out” (Jn. 6:37).
The surprising added plea: “They know not what they do”
This is the only occasion on which our Lord in prayer gave a reason for the granting of a petition. But surely this ignorance only aggravated the offence! Think of His character, words and deeds, and you will feel compelled to admit that their “ignorance” was inexcusable. We must not think of such ignorance as placing their sin in a milder light, and making them, as it were, deserving of forgiveness. Christ would not have cried, “Forgive” if their ignorance were a sufficient excuse. Instead we understand that the sin of these murderers belonged to that period which Paul called “the times of this ignorance” at which he says “God winked at, but now commands all men everywhere to repent” (Ac. 17:30).
Even ignorant men need forgiveness. The fact is, their ignorance itself is a sin. They are sometimes found making a mock of the gospel, sneering at Jesus and His claims, scoffing at His followers, laughing at His words, shrugging their shoulders at His miracles, living as if He had never come—but they need this Jesus, though they do not know it. And when they turn to Him in true repentance and simple faith, His voice will still be heard crying, “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.”